Messaging systems (Mobilbox, voice mail systems) are available in the marketplace (e.g., http://www.t-mobile.de/mobilbox). Depending on the system structure, voice messages are often stored here as attachments of text messages (e-mail attachments together with sender information (such as sender identification (e.g., CLI, etc.)), arrival time, etc.
There are also various speech recognition systems in the telephone sector (e.g., http://www.nuance.com; http://www.scansoft.com, etc.), and systems for desktop dictation recognition (e.g., Dragon Naturally Speaking at http://www.scansoft.com, and IBM ViaVoice at http://www.ibm.com/software/voice/viavoice), which are able to convert spoken language into text information. These systems have at their disposal deterministic grammars (e.g., nuance grammar specification language) or grammars based on internal statistics (e.g., Scansoft). The latter are produced mostly in an application-based or domain-based manner with the aid of a large quantity of textual data, for example, from newspaper articles, books or language data compilations, so as to calculate detector-internal probability models for word transitions from word sequences occurring in these texts.
To assist in multilingual speech recognition, newer speech-recognition systems also offer internal functions for dynamic foreign language detection (e.g., http://www.nuance.com/assets/pdf/nuance85_datasheet—020304.pdf). A foreign language detection based on algorithms from speech-signal processing may be implemented by, for example, analyzing the frequency at which phonemes occur in a spoken utterance, which are provided by a phoneme-based speech detector.
Reference WO 03/024073 purportedly refers to a method for presenting information from telephone messages to a user where a search for predefined information is implemented within voice messages. The method apparently includes the steps of receiving incoming telephone messages and detecting language in the incoming telephone messages by searching the incoming telephone messages for at least one previously defined information category. If a previously predefined information category is found in the detected language, the information is reproduced for the user. And, single-language systems are not always able to be used if, for instance, messages in different languages are involved. However, this and similar methods fail to take into account that the received voice messages may have been recorded in a language other than the one required for the recipient.
Also available are systems for translating written language and spoken language (e.g., Fu-Hua Liu et al. “Noise robustness in speech to speech translation”, IBM Tech Report RC22874, 2003), in which a method for reducing noise on the speech detection level is described.
Available translation systems (e.g., http://penance.is.cs.cmu.edu/11-733/Slides/Joyzhang.pdf and http://www.linguatec.de/products/pt2004/index.shtml), assume knowledge of the source and target languages for selection of the appropriate translation module.
Available approaches appear to provide that no automatic foreign language detection takes place where the language of the incoming message is detected, and specifically on the source language side.
Also available is classifying messages both according to acquired supplementary data and according to their contents, and to categorize them in accordance with the mailbox owner's or the system operator's intentions. Reference European patent no. 1298872 purportedly refers to a method for processing messages in a unified messaging system where different message categories are defined so that each message in a unified messaging system is able to be assigned to a rule that is part of at least one category. For example, the message category may include categories that are assigned to specific types or formats, as well as categories that are freely definable. It is possible to define specific rules for the message categories which are used for message assignment. This approach, too, fails to take a possible multi-linguality of incoming messages into account.
Reference US 2002/0069048 presents some general ideas for translating messages with output in an audio format, without a detection of the source language having been described in greater detail. Such approaches have the disadvantage that during the dialogue with the system the message recipient is obliged to explain in cumbersome detail in what target languages he wishes the audio output of each individual message to occur.
Also available are approaches that are based on detecting various sensor data and their transmission via a telecommunication network. Reference DE 101 49 049 A1, for example, purportedly refers to a method and a system for creating and modifying a virtual biological representation of the users of computer applications based on biological parameters of the user of the computer applications.